Philipp Meyer's The Son is an epic, myth-busting look at the American Dream

The Son begins with Eli McCullough, who as a boy on the Texas frontier in the 1830s witnesses the horrific slaughter of his family by a raiding party of Comanches, who then raise him as one of their own. Decades later Eli has left the Comanches and carved out a position as one of the most powerful men in Texas, with a ruthlessness his son Peter fully detests. Meyer did not sit down to write a book puncturing the American Dream. “All my ideas come somewhere from my subconscious; I’m never aware why I’m doing something. 

I thought the book might have to do with Texas and oil. But then I started thinking that the whole history of Texas was emblematic of the mythology of America as a whole, the whole creation myth. You could go out west to Texas where there is untamed and unsettled land and resources, and all you have to be is brave to be successful.”

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via We Love This Book